Bread in Germany with Flat Stanley

We had the privilege of showing “Flat Stanley” around our corner of Germany, after he flew over in an envelope from an elementary school in Massachusetts. He has since returned to the U.S., but his adventures were fun!

Flat Stanley needed some lunch when he got off the plane, and he found lots of choices at a German grocery store. His first choice was pre-packaged bread, similar to what is in American grocery stores.

His next choice was freshly baked bread. You can take the entire loaf home (whole), or you can put the fresh loaf into a bread slicing machine, and presto- neat slices of fresh bread.

Flat Stanley knows someone who cannot eat bread that has gluten in it, so he wanted to make sure that people in Germany have gluten-free choices. They do!

A few days later, Flat Stanley passed by a bakery and thought the bread there looked great! Of course, you don’t have to eat bread for lunch, but that is a popular choice for lots of kids in Germany and in Massachusetts.

Off the beaten path in France: Strasbourg

We had lunch in Strasbourg last summer on the way to Switzerland, but the stop was too short for a blog post. This time, we have more photos and stories to tell. Depending on which roads you take from Kaiserslautern, it’s a bit over 2 hours.

We climbed the cathedral tower first off. FYI, there is a public restroom underground to the right of the cathedral as you face the main doors. We’d recommend a boat tour of the river around Strasbourg, with multi-lingual recorded narration.

We’d highly recommend the hot chocolate and pastries in Strasbourg…we did not have as much luck with lunch during either visit. Please be aware that if you order “boeuf”, it will not necessarily be cooked beef. I discovered tartare by accident, and am no worse for the experience, but just in case the thought of paper-thin sliced raw beef is not your idea of fun, this is a head’s up. Both restaurants included meat-heavy menus, with a few vegetarian choices. The second lunch educated me as well, yielding larger-than-golf-ball-sized hunks of liverwurst. I actually like liverwurst sandwiches, but not large balls of the stuff!

Our favorite moment was difficult to photograph, because we were sitting in a café enjoying stupendous “chocolat chaud”, when a black cat strolled by wearing a harness on a leash!!!!

There are a number of parking garages near the old-town neighborhood of “Petite France”. Both times we tried to leave Strasbourg, we had a tough time with sudden lane changes and poor signage, despite a GPS, so be alert.

Transportation museum not far from Kaiserslautern and Frankfurt

When we went to Badewelt (indoor pool) in Sinsheim, we saw what looked like an airplane museum on the other side of the autobahn. Jeff said, “let’s go there sometime!” During our stay-cation over New Years, we did just that, and would highly recommend an excursion to Sinsheim. The “Auto & Technik” museum is about 1 hour and 15 minutes away from the K-town area, and the brochure says it’s an hour south of Frankfurt. The 14 Euro ticket was worth it to us.

In addition to airplanes you can climb into, the museum includes lots of cars, including old American beauties. Then of course, are race cards, older European models, racing bicycles, and motorcycles. There’s a large section of military vehicles, which includes display cases of military uniforms. One massive room has farming equipment and throughout the building are old organs! You pay 1 or 2 Euro and the organ plays a tune!

On the roof are a bunch of airplanes, including a Concorde and an old Russian passenger plane. They are not handicapped accessible, and are reached by narrow spiral staircases. It is recommended that you wear sensible shoes, as the planes are on an incline with their noses pointed upwards! The cockpits are nifty to see, and kids can go down an indoor slide from the roof back into the museum.

Of course there is a restaurant and gift shop. Thankfully, the restaurant has a small salad bar in addition to hot foods, soup, and desserts. We didn’t see an IMAX movie, but several different shows were played with narration in German. Their sister “Technik Museum” in Speyer is less than half an hour away (closer to K-town), and features astronaut stuff, more planes, a sub, and fire trucks! We’ll let you know after we go there.

Vegetable Quiche Pie

When I think of quiche, it usually includes masses of eggs, cream, bacon, and cheese. In other words, a delicious cholesterol special without much redeeming nutritional value. I received a recipe calendar as a gift, and spotted this cholesterol special right away. The focus on vegetables in the photo was appealing, and I really like pine nuts and Emmentaler cheese, so I decided to modify the recipe!

I’ve always used a typical pie plate for quiche in the past, but decided to copy this photo and use a tart pan for a wider, thinner pie. I did not prepare a crust from scratch, but intentionally used a standard American refrigerator version that was smaller than the crust pictured- it did not come all the way up the sides, which was ok. I’ve commented before on the nice selection of frozen veggies here in Germany, so I lucked out again with a box of chopped spinach which included a bit of cream, thus reducing my need to add butter and whole milk to the recipe.

Here’s what I did: mix 3 eggs plus ½ cup liquid egg substitute. Add ½ cup low fat milk if you are using frozen spinach, which will be wet as it thaws. Add 150 grams Emmentaler cheese (a nice, strong Swiss cheese). Mix in spinach. I sautéed a cup or more of mushrooms in a splash of oil and added the cut cherry tomatoes to give the mushrooms cooking liquid. The tomatoes didn’t look so glamorous in my finished product as in the recipe photo, but they tasted fine. I did not add extra salt.

The recipe does not instruct us to pre-bake the crust, but recommends pricking the crust with a fork a few times. Spread the vegetables and egg mixture over the crust, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until the top is nicely browned. The temperature and time are honest guesses, since I’m using a German oven and forgot to time myself! I’d rather have a gently over-done pie than a soggy one, so use your judgment in removing the quiche from the oven. It tasted great! I didn’t stage a nice photo of a wedge of pie with pine nuts sprinkled because I cut the whole thing up into smaller pieces to bring to church, where it promptly disappeared.

Heidelberg Christmas Markets by train from Kaiserslautern

We debated driving just over an hour to Heidelberg, or taking the train for 1 ½ hours. When we woke up and saw thick fog and just barely-above-freezing temperatures, we unanimously voted on the train. Tickets were not available online, but the schedule was, so we drove a few minutes to the “Hauptbahnhof” in K-town and parked our car (6 Euro fee at departure).

The train ticket machine had a handy British flag and the instructions popped up in English. We bought one-way tickets to Heidelberg-Altstadt because the larger Christmas markets are in the old town. We didn’t see any option to buy a round-trip ticket (9.70 Euro per person each way). Not sure how much a parking garage in Heidelberg would have cost, but the fog and potential for rush hour traffic on the way home made the train tickets worth it to us, plus on street parking was about non-existent.

We had time to stop at the bakery in the train station before going to our platform shortly before the train pulled into the station. We found seats and had our tickets ready to be stamped, but no conductor came through during this leg of the trip. 

The scenery was nice, and we read books most of the way through 20 or so stops. The train got more crowded the closer to Heidelberg that we got, but we were past any morning rush hour there might have been, so it was never over-crowded.

We walked a few blocks from the train station to the first of the Christmas markets, which included a small skating rink, plenty of sausages for sale, and potato pankakes (Reibkuchen) with apple sauce. They tasted great, of course. We passed on a 50 cent toilet trailer. The next market was just a block away, and had many vendors of gifts/crafts, as well as food. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant that didn’t charge for tap water- a big thank you for that! All the customers at the time were Americans. We did not see a whole lot of vegetarian/health foods at the market stalls, and restaurants/cafés of course have heated bathrooms.

 We started down the world’s (allegedly) longest pedestrian shopping street, and checked out an apple store (no new ipad today!), and an ice cream/dessert shop with a large sticker of Sesame Street's cookie monster on the glass door. Several churches were open for people to stop in, light a candle (50 cents donation), and sit for a moment. We came upon another market area, and bumped into some people we knew from Ramstein Air Base. One indoor Christmas ornament store was playing American carols at full volume.

Providing excellent customer service is something that small German shops pride themselves in. Jeff’s wallet had been disintegrating over the months, and when we stopped at a leather shop, the salesperson showed Jeff a dozen men’s wallets and narrowed down his options based on his preferences for size, color, style, etc.

A stupendous hot chocolate followed at nearby "Schmelzpunkt" and we stocked up on shower gel at “Lush”. A cute gadget shop yielded stocking stuffers, and another small market stall area included more food and arts/crafts that we didn’t get this time around.

We ended our day trip at “Red”, a vegetarian restaurant closer to the main train station. Even if you are not vegetarian, the healthy and delicious choices at the hot and cold buffets are worth the expense. We walked to the Hauptbahnhof, bought return tickets at the machine, and didn’t even have time to look at the shops as we jogged to our train. Our tickets were checked just as soon as we pulled out of the station. It was a full train most of the way back, but everyone had a seat. During one short delay, the announcer informed us of the reason and apologized for the inconvenience. All in all, we’d take the train again to Heidelberg. Due to the fog, we didn’t go up to the castle this time, but we heard that there is another Christmas market at the castle.

Way off the beaten path in France (the Alsace region)

When Jeff travelled to Texas for a work conference, I asked around over here about a day trip while he was gone. My colleagues immediately organized a tour of several towns on the western edge of France, not far from where we are in Germany. We piled into one car together on Saturday morning, and headed south to Soufflenheim. This village is known for its pottery, but I did not buy any. It was very nice, but our kitchen here is so small that we gave a away a bunch of things when we arrived, and anything new has to be truly needed. We enjoyed a lovely, relaxing lunch as the town shut down from noon to 2 pm (we know all about that!). FYI, "limonade" is pretty much sprite.  

The village of Riquewihr, France

After lunch, we proceeded to Ribeauville, where a fortunate wrong turn off the highway led us directly into the parking lot of a chocolate factory outlet store! Gee whiz, it’s about time for a rest room break, and might as well check out the chocolates while we are here. These folks have a lot to learn from the Cailler factory in Switzerland, because we got ABSOLUTELY NO free samples in the store in France, which made it harder to spend big bucks on boxes of chocolates. We’d still recommend stopping at the Chocolaterie due Vignoble Daniel Stoffel, as they did give everyone a free sample AFTER making a purchase- literally on the way out the door, and that sample was GOOOOOOD! I would have bought way more if they’d had the samples at the front door rather than the exit.

Riquewihr

The search for tablecloths for 2 office-mates continued in the next town of Riquewihr, which was gorgeous but did not host the famous table cloth store they were seeking. There were plenty of Maracons (both kinds- coconut macaroons and French macaron cookies), pottery shops, and textiles such as napkins, towels, and bolts of cloth. We strolled through cobblestone streets with lovely architecture, and had a wonderful roll with an ok bowl of soup. Too bad we were too full thereafter to partake of the luscious pies at the café.

Sunset, soup and roll

We had planned to continue driving south to Colmar, but that will have to wait for the next time. It was getting late and we still had a 2 hour drive home. We drove right past Strasbourg, France- another place to return to.

Off the beaten path- Russia!

We did not step one toe off the beaten path in St. Petersburg, but going to Russia in the first place was relatively off the beaten path! This was the only port where we booked tours through the cruise line, in part because obtaining visas to travel outside a group is a lengthy process.

Tourists get a nice tour bus, and I noticed discrepancies between how we were treated, and regular people's lives- see tram above. The historic buildings we stopped at were amazing, but regular apartment buildings had boarded up/barred windows, and some had peeling paint & rusting window frames. Most tours included a stop at an official souvenir shop, which felt like a gimmick because there was nowhere else nearby to go except into that shop. On a half-day tour, it seemed oppressive to spend 20 minutes in an overcrowded shop with higher prices.

One tour bus stopped for “lunch and shopping” across the square from the Russian Museum, which was well worth the $5.29 entrance fee, payable in Rubles or credit card (the amount quoted here was based on the exchange rate that day). The museum, formerly a palace, had very nice artwork on display in magnificent rooms.

An evening at the ballet was wonderful. I didn’t know that the ending of Swan Lake had been re-written at some point, because the original ending was so tragic.

Look at these magnificent mosaics! Millions of pieces of glass! This is the interior of the church pictured above.

We didn’t go to any American fast food restaurants. This trip was an amazing opportunity to a historic city.